Stop being a follower and start leading!

Samuel Kitazume
Sep 6, 2018 · 3 min read

Maybe it’s going to sound not comfortable at all for most of us, including me at first, but whenever I read a new article about what’s the design’s new role that will cut off all our troubles for good, I think about how the world has never really changed. What am I saying? I’m saying that most of our new innovative design processes are more of the same: thinking before doing and knowing why you are doing what you’re doing.

It’s not new

Way before this whole design market was born there were architects and engineers, and inventors, and philosophers and so on. What do they have in common? They were leaders. They had a problem (or not) and they thought about that, and they figured out how to solve it. Was it the best way to solve those problems? Maybe, but nobody had another solution so the world has followed them ever since. However, every new invention is a bunch of trade-offs. With a brand new methodology comes a lot of inconvenience the inventor judged it’s worth it but not for everyone, so for every single problem of a past solution comes at least one other solution for it. That’s the way I see the world working nowadays, people thinking about problems and what they are doing to solve it and people that use those solutions as recipes of success but they are always in need of a leader.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad at all, it’s just the way I see all those fluffy and colorful UX design methodologies’s new names. Once it was architecture and then it became design, and then UX design and it doesn’t seem to stop any time soon. I bet you can tell at least five different roles of design you don’t have a clue what they do.

That’s because there are lots of leaders and followers out there. Once a problem meets a leader, there comes a solution. Once a new solution is born, there comes a horde of followers, but what’s the matter about it? None.
Listen to me, I’m not trying to bring another problem, I’m just trying to help you that was thinking you need a whole new design team or specialist, or you thinking you need to get in a design’s new role web course. I’m sorry, but you don’t need it. You just got to start being a leader. How do you do that? Here goes my thoughts about it:

Stop using recipes

It’s not about using methodologies. Methodologies are good. Repetition is good, but only if you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. There’s no reason for you to solve a problem you don’t have, and if you don’t quite understand why you’re doing something probably that’s because you don’t have the problem it solves.

Start focusing on the problem

If the methodology is in your mind more than the problem, maybe you’re lacking focus. Methodologies are there because someone spent much effort to acknowledge the problem and made every step precisely for the problem they saw, but the problem might not be the same of yours so start thinking if what you are doing is actually helping to solve your problems, otherwise it might be creating new ones.

Be self-confident

You are not thinking with someone’s head. You are focused on your problems. You know what you have to do. So do it with confidence. Just do it. Nobody knows your problems better than you and nobody wants them to be solved as much as you, so just go for it. No one is better than you for this job.

Be humble

We know our problems but most of the time there are lots of people more experienced than us, so listen to them. Listening to a person that faced similar problems is wise so pay attention to it.


Well, here I share some of my thoughts. It might be helpful. If you find it interesting, please let me know on the comments section below, if you don’t, maybe you could share your opinion too.

Hope you get something out of it. Take care.

Cheers — Sam

Written by

Passionate, design driven and happy, wishing to learn day by day how to enjoy life the most.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade